Windows Azure
Customer Solution Case Study
Lockheed Martin Merges Cloud Agility with
Premises Control to Meet Customer Needs
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Manufacturing
Customer Profile
With 136,000 employees and 2009 sales
of U.S.$45.2 billion, Lockheed Martin
operates in four business areas:
Aeronautics, Space Systems, Electronic
Systems, and Information Systems and
Global Solutions.
Business Situation
Lockheed Martin wanted to deliver the
performance and flexibility of cloud
computing to its customers, while
enabling them to balance security,
privacy and confidentiality concerns.
Solution
Lockheed Martin used Windows Azure to
develop the Thundercloud™ design
pattern, which integrates on-premises
infrastructures with compute, storage,
and application services in the cloud.
Benefits
 Agility and speed
 Enhanced infrastructure at lower costs
 On-demand, usage-based model
 Ubiquitous access
“Our customers believe that, by using cloud
computing, they can save between 40 and 60 percent
of the infrastructure cost that they would normally
spend in order to achieve the same capabilities.”
Melvin Greer, Chief Strategist, Cloud Computing, Information Systems and
Global Solutions, Lockheed Martin
Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a
global security company that employs about 136,000 people
worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design,
development, manufacture, integration, and sustainment of
advanced technology systems, products, and services. The
company wanted to help its customers obtain the benefits of
cloud computing, while balancing security, privacy, and
confidentiality concerns. The company used Windows Azure to
develop the Thundercloud™ design pattern, which integrates onpremises infrastructure with compute, storage, and application
services in the cloud. Now, Lockheed Martin can provide its
customers with vast computing power, enhanced business
agility, and reduced costs of application infrastructure, while
maintaining full control of their data and security processes.
“Windows Azure has the
elasticity and scalability
we need to … add or
subtract computing,
storage, and datatransfer resources for
mission applications on
demand; access the
resources from any
device via the Internet;
and pay for them based
on utilization.”
Melvin Greer, Chief Strategist, Cloud
Computing, Information Systems and
Global Solutions, Lockheed Martin
Situation
Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland,
Lockheed Martin is a global security
company that employs about 136,000
people worldwide and is principally
engaged in the research, design,
development, manufacture, integration,
and sustainment of advanced technology
systems, products, and services. The
corporation reported 2009 sales of
U.S.$45.2 billion.
While Lockheed Martin is well known as a
premier defense contractor, the company
also develops innovative IT solutions for
government, healthcare, and energy
markets. In fact, Lockheed Martin is the
largest provider of IT services to the United
States government, helping the
Department of Defense and other federal
agencies manage challenges such as cyber
security, energy consumption, and
development and climate change.
“Lockheed Martin customers need the
capacity to respond dynamically and
comprehensively to some of the country’s
most serious business challenges, from
conducting the U.S. Census to launching
manned missions to Mars,” says Melvin
Greer, Chief Strategist, Cloud Computing,
Information Systems and Global Solutions
at Lockheed Martin. “We need the capacity
to respond with agility and flexibility to the
needs of government customers.”
Since 2009, the U.S. government and
Lockheed Martin have been evaluating
cloud computing—the use of computing
and data storage resources that are hosted
in an external data center and accessible as
consumption-based application services
through the network. Lockheed Martin
cloud-computing strategy is built on a
foundation of innovation and partnership.
The company understands that despite the
perceived risks, cloud computing can
provide fast and flexible access to IT
resources for its customers, while lowering
the government’s significant ownership
costs.
In an on-premises IT infrastructure, an
agency invests in the purchase,
configuration, management, and
maintenance of on-site computing
hardware and software to meet its IT
requirements. By using cloud computing,
an agency can subscribe to services and
pay for just the resources it uses as it needs
them. “The consumption-based cost model
in the cloud is extremely appealing to our
government customers,” says Greer.
Today, cloud computing is an important
component of the federal government’s IT
strategy. But Lockheed Martin’s federal
government customers must maintain strict
control over their systems, and they must
use every precaution to protect confidential
and often sensitive information. In fact,
federal regulations restrict some kinds of
government data from being stored
outside the government’s direct control.
“We can’t talk about cloud computing
inside Lockheed Martin without addressing
security, access control, and
confidentiality,” says Greer. “So our goal is
to balance these risks, while helping our
customers realize the promise of cloud
computing: speed, agility, and lower costs.”
Solution
To deliver the performance and flexibility of
cloud computing to its customers, while
addressing their critical security
requirements, Lockheed Martin developed
the Thundercloud™ design pattern in 2009.
Design patterns are important tools used
by engineers, architects, and software
developers to provide technical solutions
faster, with consistent compliance to best
practices, all at a lower cost.
Thundercloud™ helps cloud computing
implementers integrate on-premises IT
infrastructure with computing, storage, and
application services in the cloud and extend
those applications to a remote, portable, or
handheld mobile device.
The Thundercloud™ design pattern from
Lockheed Martin has been implemented by
using Windows Azure. Windows Azure is a
cloud-based application development,
service hosting, and service management
environment that provides developers with
on-demand compute and storage to host,
scale, and manage web applications on the
Internet through Microsoft data centers.
By using Thundercloud™, an organization
can keep information behind its own
firewall, where it retains full control and
exclusive use of its data and its own
security, privacy, and compliance processes,
and it can realize the elastic scale, agility,
and cost benefits of cloud computing. By
powering Thundercloud™ applications with
Windows Azure, Lockheed Martin
customers can add or remove computing
resources to a solution quickly, paying only
for what it uses.
“Windows Azure has the elasticity and
scalability we need to make Thundercloud™
work,” says Greer. “We can add or subtract
computing, storage, and data-transfer
resources for mission applications on
demand; access the resources from any
device via the Internet; and pay for them
based on utilization.”
Lockheed Martin developers use the
Thundercloud™ design pattern and
Windows Azure to build applications for
customers, and Lockheed Martin customers
can use the Thundercloud™ design pattern
to build their own applications. Developers
can build Thundercloud™-based
applications with familiar tools, such as the
Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 and
Microsoft SQL Azure, a self-managed
database service built on technologies in
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 data
management software.
Developers can use Windows Azure to
enhance Thundercloud™-based
applications by integrating on-premises
enterprise data sets and security methods
to computing resources in the cloud. By
using Windows Azure, developers can work
with applications that run Windows Azure
and the Windows Server 2008 operating
system, as well as Java, Ruby, PHP, and
other technologies.
“All of the standard Microsoft development
tools fit right into the Windows Azure
framework,” says Greer. “Developers can
use the tools they know to build
Thundercloud™-based applications and
integrate them to the cloud with Windows
Azure.”
In order to effectively demonstrate the
viability of the pattern, data portability
from one cloud to another, interoperability
between clouds, and extension of cloud
services to multiple mobile devices,
Lockheed Martin has built five innovative
mission-focused end-user applications:
Healthcare Case Management, Augmented
Reality for First Responders, Weather and
Ocean Observing, Records and Information
Management, and Biometric-Enabled
Identity Management. The company is
working to develop a limited pilot of the
biometric-enabled identity management
application for the 2010 Caribbean Games
in Puerto Rico to demonstrate how
organizations can use Thundercloud™based applications and Windows Azure to
accurately identify and quickly provide
access for authorized personnel to both
virtual and physical spaces.
“With Windows Azure,
we can support more
robust, more adaptive,
and more cost-effective
solutions for our
customers.”
Melvin Greer, Chief Strategist, Cloud
Computing, Information Systems and
Global Solutions, Lockheed Martin
In the biometric-enabled identity
management scenario, athletes and other
key personnel would submit a digital facial
photograph along with other private
identification information to the Games
Organizing Committee, which will store the
data in its own infrastructure under its own
access controls. When an athlete wants to
access a housing, training, or event facility,
a security officer will photograph the
athlete with a handheld device, such as a
smartphone connected to a biometric
processing engine hosted in Windows
Azure. The biometric engine will process
the photo and authenticate it against the
biometric, personal, and other sensitive
information kept behind the Organizing
Committee’s firewall, and the security
officer can view the result from the
handheld device to confirm the athlete’s
identity.
Lockheed Martin believes that its customers
can use the cloud-based biometric-enabled
identity management solution to help
control access to secure areas at military
installations, government and financial
institutions, airports, and large public
events, such as the Olympic Games or a
Presidential Inauguration.
Benefits
By using Windows Azure to implement the
Thundercloud™ design pattern, Lockheed
Martin is helping to accelerate the adoption
of cloud computing in the U.S. federal
government by enabling its government
customers to maintain the security, privacy,
and confidentiality they require, while
delivering speed, agility, and costeffectiveness. The company can provide its
customers with vast computing power,
enhanced business flexibility, full control of
their important data and processes, and the
capabilities they need to meet a growing
range of challenges.
“We assist our customers with a wide range
of mission capability, from space
exploration to the managing and archiving
of our nation’s records to protecting
national security,” says Greer. “With
Windows Azure, we can support more
robust, more adaptive, and more costeffective solutions for our customers.”
Agility with Control
With the Thundercloud™ design pattern
and Windows Azure, Lockheed Martin’s
customers can preserve their confidential
data in their own on-premises
infrastructure and obtain the benefits of
cloud computing. Lockheed Martin’s
biometric-enabled identity management
application demonstrates how the
company’s customers can use
Thundercloud™ and Windows Azure to
gain the agility and lower costs associated
with cloud computing, while maintaining
full control over their own data and security
processes.
“That’s the beauty of Windows Azure,” says
Greer. “By integrating an application with
both the cloud and a customer’s onpremises infrastructure, and extending the
capability via a mobile device, we can make
sure that personal and private information
never leaves the secure environment where
it’s stored.”
Enhanced Capacity at Lower Costs
By using Windows Azure, Lockheed Martin
ensures that its customers can take
advantage of cloud computing to enhance
their IT capacity, while reducing the costs
they would otherwise incur to purchase,
manage, and maintain an expanded onpremises IT infrastructure.
“Our customers believe that, by using cloud
computing, they can save between 40 and
60 percent of the infrastructure cost that
they would normally spend in order to
achieve the same capabilities,” says Greer.
“With Windows Azure,
we’ve been able to
achieve the kind of
productivity and speed
that our customers
expect.”
Melvin Greer, Chief Strategist, Cloud
Computing, Information Systems and
Global Solutions, Lockheed Martin
“The federal government spends nearly $80
billion on IT capabilities so that’s a
significant amount of potential savings.”
Power and Flexibility on Demand
By making it easier for federal agencies to
take advantage of IT resources in the cloud,
Lockheed Martin can offer its customers
the computing power and business agility
they need. For example, by using the
Thundercloud™ biometric-enabled identity
management solution, an organization can
very quickly process extremely complex
biometric parameters, such as facial
recognition, retinal or fingerprint scans, and
voice recognition, without having to make
a major infrastructure investment.
What’s more, if the organization has to add
1,000 more security locations or otherwise
modify its Thundercloud™-based
application, it can use Windows Azure to
automatically scale up its required
computing needs and pay only for what it
uses. “If a threat level changes, or a new
threat is identified, we can use Windows
Azure to modify the application and redeploy it to every stakeholder extremely
quickly,” says Greer.
High Efficiency
Because they can use their existing
development experience to build
Thundercloud™-based applications with
Windows Azure, Lockheed Martin’s
customers and its own developers can
develop new capabilities quickly and at
lower cost. In fact, Lockheed Martin was
able to use Windows Azure and familiar
development tools in Windows Azure to
develop the Thundercloud™-based
biometric-enabled identity management
solution in only 10 weeks, a project Greer
estimates might have taken much longer
otherwise. That is more time that Lockheed
Martin developers now have to innovate
updates based on customized mission
requirements.
“That is the kind of efficiency that is very
difficult to achieve,” says Greer. “Our
customers already understand the
capabilities of cloud computing. They know
how to search an application store and
start using new applications almost
instantly. With Windows Azure, we’ve been
able to achieve the kind of productivity and
speed that our customers expect.”
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For more information about Lockheed
Martin products and services, visit the
website at:
www.lockheedmartin.com
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Training Course
Download: Windows Azure Training Kit
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This case study is for informational purposes only.
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IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published July 2010
Windows Azure
− Windows Azure
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Technologies
− Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5